Work Text:
> it’s not green, it’s teal
> there’s a difference, you know.
< That is definitely green.
Ellie put her phone down and brought her eyes back to the very lengthy, very difficult task she had for homework. She took some manner of comfort in knowing it wasn’t due anytime soon, but she wasn’t the type to leave those kinds of things for the last minute, either. The problem was, college was difficult. Not too difficult – exactly the right amount to be challenging – but it also meant she couldn’t just finish her own papers and then three other students’ in the span of two hours.
So maybe she wasn’t as organized and responsible as she thought – maybe things just used to require very little effort. But this was fine, infinitely better than high school in the middle of nowhere, USA. At least there was a diversity of faces and ideas. At least she wasn’t bored. Lonely, a little, but not bored. Her phone pinged.
> it’s a very particular, intense shade. I don’t think you can reproduce it with a phone screen, you’d have to see it on the canvas
< Then paint it and send me a picture.
> okay.
Ellie smiled despite herself. She rolled the pen with her index finger, once again glaring at the book. She wanted to get it over with as fast as she could, but damn, she had ten whole days to finish it. Maybe just this once she could allow herself some flirting time, as a treat.
(the thought of herself flirting still did not compute, but she supposed that was what she was doing)
> wait a second!!
Ellie grinned before she read the next message.
> if I send you a picture, the color will still be limited by the pixels of your phone!!!!
> it’s like plato’s allegory of the cave
> you can only ever see the shadow of teal.
Ellie laughed, physically, so much that she had to put the phone down and wipe the corner of her eyes. She didn’t have a strong opinion on the shades of cyan, but Aster was strangely particular about the things that involved her art, as if she couldn’t accept anything but perfection, and that left a ton of room for teasing.
< Yes, and that shadow is green.
> IT’S TEAL
It was so easy, talking to Aster – maybe a little too easy, enough to be scary. Most times, Ellie wanted to stop herself. Most times, she didn’t. She was setting herself up for a world of pain and she knew it, but some stubborn part of her kept reminding her that if she wasn’t occasionally indulging in her whims, then she wasn’t really living.
A pop-up notification with Paul’s face snapped her back to reality, and she and tapped it open. They had spent the night discussing the potential market possibilities for his taco-sausages, which provided her with a rather unique opportunity to make use of the microeconomics classes that were, for some reason, in her curriculum. The recipe was fine, but he definitely had to work on the marketing.
She eyed his text – just a picture of him holding his masterpiece with that big doofus smile – and carefully scrolled through the emoji list on her phone. There wasn’t a sausage one, and she’d learned the hard way that the phallic-shaped ones like the eggplant and the cucumber were often used to represent, well, penises, so it made sense there would be no sausages. But there was a taco one, and she tapped it two, no, three times, then hit the thumbs up twice and sent it.
Making a split-second decision, she also sent the picture of Aster’s palette.
< What color is this?
> Green??
Smirking in triumph, she took a screenshot, then tabbed back to Aster. She sent the image, followed by a text:
< Paul agrees.
< It’s green.
Giving up on any pretenses of studying any longer, she put a bookmark on the pages and then closet the book and placed it back into a neat pile. She pushed the floor with her feet, making the chair scroll back until it hit the bed, then stood. Her guitar was leaning against the wall, and she picked it up and sat on the bed.
> oh my god. did you use emojis???
< They are Paul’s preferred means of communication.
Ellie put the phone down and plucked at her guitar absently, kicking off her socks as she did it. She went through the chords one by one, C-D-E-F-A-B, paying close attention to each one to make sure the strings were tuned. She managed to catch one last text from Aster before the phone screen went dark.
Ellie unlocked the phone with a single hand, the other still drumming over the strings and making a cacophony of disconnected sounds.
> what’s yours?
She arched her eyebrows at it, leaning over the guitar so she could type with both hands.
< My… preferred means of communication?
> sure. gotta make sure we speak the same language.
> I’m already fluent in nerd, but numbers-speak is turning out to be really hard to learn
Ellie paused for a moment and considered the question. She was tempted to answer mandarin, because it was the language she’d grown up with, but she knew that while it would be a valid answer, it also wouldn’t be the answer Aster was looking for. And her damn therapist did tell her it was healthy to open up, sometimes.
She sighed, typed, erased it, then typed again.
< English or mandarin are fine. Unless you mean emotionally. I’m emotionally incommunicable.
< No feelings. I’m a robot.
She waited for an answer, and when it took a while, she went back to her guitar. Of all the instruments she could play, she liked the piano the most – there was something about its precision, its formality and complexity that really appealed to her. But the guitar had the convenience of being portable.
(she was still playing Mozart on it, though)
C-D-E-F-G-A-B, over and over. It wasn’t music, per se, but it was harmonic, rising and falling like waves. Ellie stared at her fingers as they moved, feeling oddly detached, and wondered if Aster knew what she did to her. She wondered if Aster knew it was of her Ellie thought, when she sat down to give shape to a new tune.
(maybe music was her language, but if it was, Ellie refused to acknowledge that there were feelings to it. It was elaborate maths and no more than that.)
Her phone pinged again, and she caught herself smiling before she could even unlock the screen. There was an odd thrill to this flirting business, like a game of cat-and-mouse, and she found herself agreeing – the horror! – with Paul. It was, she would dare say, fun.
> [ if: free this weekend] ---> [watch a movie with me?]
Ellie laughed. She knew she should say no. It was the responsible thing to do. She still had a lot to study and her paper had, once again, been neglected. She knew it. For sure. She should study.
< Impressive. Every single piece of that syntax was wrong.
> excuse me. I actually spent time googling it.
Of all things it was that, for some unspeakable reason, which made her cheeks burn. She looked away from the phone screen, as she would have if she’d actually been making eye contact with Aster, then forced herself to look back.
< Maybe instead of a movie I should teach you to code.
> it’s a date, then.
When she felt her heart do a little leap, she told herself she was just tired.
But a treacherous part of her brain loosely quoted Sartre to her and reminded her:
If this goes to hell, it’ll be no one’s fault but your own.
--
As it turned out, Ellie could finish her paper in the span of two hours, given the right stimulus.
(what she couldn’t quite tell was what kind of panic the right stimulus was – the last-minute panic type or the gay panic type)
--
Aster liked watching cartoons. Ellie figured the fascination for animation was an art school thing. She didn’t mind it, although it was a stark difference from the classical movies she was used to watching with her father. No, the one thing that really bothered her from their online dates was the fact that they were, well, online; she really did wish they were physically close. But patience was a virtue, and Ellie figured she shouldn’t kid herself – she was much too shy to make a move, even if Aster were right there.
(or maybe she wasn’t. she had surprised herself once, so there was empirical evidence such a thing could happen again.)
Regardless, she appreciated that she and Aster got to spend time together, and Aster’s brain was just weird enough that she could bring up interesting discussions about anything, even movies which Ellie wouldn’t, by herself, find thought-provoking.
Case in question: Disney’s Frozen
“She’s gay,” Aster was sitting comfortably on her bed, legs crossed. Her socks were decorated with drawings of little puppies. “She ends the movie without a prince, see? She doesn’t as much as look at a man the whole movie.”
They’d been marathoning Disney princess movies, the last month or so, starting all the way from the classics and working their way up the 3d-animated ones, because Aster was personally insulted that Ellie identified as a non-Disney-princess kind of girl. Ellie had been a bit reluctant at first – she didn’t feel like facing the monotony of several tales mainly about white heterosexual women and their princes – but there were some pleasant surprises. Mulan was accidentally subversive. Beauty and the Beast was accidentally zoophilic. Princess and the Frog was, for once, about the things that really mattered – careers.
And maybe Frozen was accidentally gay. She could see it. But she also liked being contrarian. “I mean, neither did the redhead from Brave. Her whole movie was about not wanting to get married.”
“Her movie was about loving and accepting family, you jerk,” Aster crossed her arms, though she was smiling. “I swear, you seem to miss the point of every single movie we watch.”
“I could argue that my misunderstanding of the intended messages derives from poor representativeness in media, which prevents me from truly connecting to the protagonists.” She smirked when Aster arched her eyebrows. There was a mixture of outrage and deep thought to her expression, and Ellie had to fight back a grin.
“While your point is valid,” Aster drummed her fingers against her arm, “I feel like it’s not the whole of it. There’s more to your rejection of traditional narratives than that. Isn’t there?”
She was so damn sharp about things, Ellie found it sexy. She caught the dangerous thought halfway through. It was hard to not get attached, when Aster did things like that. Ellie was trying so very hard. Because things like what they had, things between people like them? They never quite worked outside of movies. In real life, geeky kids and popular princess didn’t get along, even when the princess turned out to be surprising.
In real life, people like them most definitely did not –
“I’ll take the silence as a sign I am right,” Aster pressed, though her tone was kind and Ellie did not feel unsafe, should she want to back out.
She shoved the bittersweet thoughts to the back of her mind and focused on the matter at hand. “Hm.” She thought of men chasing after their lovers as they moved away in trains and shrugged. “I’m…” It was hard to put it into words, and she paused to think. “People are emotional. I’m not.”
“You’re not emotionless.”
Ellie sighed. “Not at all, I’m just…” Unsentimental? Cold? She looked for the words and came back blank. “I have feelings, they’re just not the number one priority. Nine out of ten times, I do things because those things make sense, not just because they feel good.” Ellie looked away from the screen, nervously tapping her foot on the carpeted floor. “And it’s not… it’s not some forced type of restraint or self-repression or anything. That’s just how I am. I guess that’s why I don’t relate to most movies. I’d say most characters and I don’t think alike, but it’s more as if they never really stop to think on first place.”
Aster tilted her head, and Ellie very deliberately fixed her gaze on her window. The city lights were beautiful, but she couldn’t help but miss the stars on the clear sky she used to see, back at her father’s house. In the city, the glow of artificial light hid them away, and Ellie figured there was probably a good metaphor to be made, there. Something about lights obfuscating other lights. Something about exchanging one beautiful thing for another.
“Are you sure this is what it is?” Aster spoke finally, and Ellie shot her a quizzical look. Aster shrugged. “I’m not saying you’re not… cerebral. I’m just saying maybe you’re just really good at rationalizing things, your own mushy emotions included.”
“I don’t like this.” Ellie scoffed. “What are you, my therapist?”
Aster laughed. She had dimples when she did so, and Ellie couldn’t help but think yes, this is a Disney princess kind of girl.
One of the surprising ones, too – though by Aster’s incessant ramblings about them, Ellie had learned each princess was subversive in her own way. Which was interesting, fascinating really, because Aster delved deep into those characters to find what made them unique, what made them stand out when all Aster did was blend in – there were important implications there. Soul-searching, maybe. A meaning hidden behind the interest in princess movies.
(maybe if she paid more attention to the movies and less attention to Aster she’d understand the damn things better)
“Am I the one out of ten, or did you kiss me because it made sense?”
Ellie had a brief moment when she stared at the screen with her best deer-in-headlights expression, and then she cleared her throat and looked away, cheeks burning, but Aster had already broken into a fit of giggles and she had half a mind to reach into the screen and smack her.
(or kiss her again. Ellie thought about kissing her again often.)
“I kissed you because…” because I wanted to. Because I was afraid, and I have this weird relationship with my own fear. Because you were glowing, you were free, and I didn’t stand a chance. “Because I thought there was nothing to lose,” she chewed the inside of her cheek. “I figured…” she shrugged.
Aster frowned. “Finish the thought.”
Ellie groaned, rubbing her face with her palm. “I didn’t think we’d be friends.” She didn’t make eye contact, instead looking intently at her palms. “Or… well, I didn’t think we’d be anything. I figured you’d go to college and… you’re a people magnet, Aster. I didn’t take you for the type to spend your Friday night watching Disney movies with some nerd a thousand miles away.”
“That hurts,” Aster leaned back against her pillow, pouting, and damn if Ellie didn’t want to kiss her, “And it’s not fair. You know that’s not who I am. That was just performative…”
“Heterosexuality?”
Aster smiled. “I was going to say popularity, but that, too.” She bowed her head just a little, enough that her hair covered part of her face. “You really saw me, Ellie. For the longest while I told myself that I should just take things as they were, and then you showed up and you saw me just the way I was, and that… changed me, or… didn’t change me, or changed me into who I really was, I don’t know.”
“Like a photon,” she nodded. “Which is either a particle or a wave depending on how you measure it.”
“I –” Aster blinked. “I was going to say something about gaslighting, internalized homophobia and religious repression in a fundamentally traditional society, but I suppose the photon works.” She paused, then burst into laughter. Ellie couldn’t stop herself from joining. Her heart ached. “Schrodinger’s… cat, or whatever, right?”
“Kind of? But not really?” She choked back a giggle, because damn it, she was passionate about physics. “The cat is a thought experiment on quantum superpositions made precisely because Schrodinger did not believe in the way it was being interpreted. It poses the question of when does a wave function collapse into a set state. Some believe for instance that it doesn’t collapse at all, but rather splits into different, non-interacting states bound to the observer –”
“Ellie, I must say, I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
Ellie looked at her for a single moment of quiet, took in the sight of her, from the expression of confusion on her face to the shape of her jaw – classic bone structure – and the way she’d rolled up her sleeves, showing the skin of her arms. She felt her heart squeeze in a painful yet pleasant thump and smiled. “So, how much do you know about quantum physics?”
A smile tugged at Aster’s lips and Ellie felt warm all over when Aster leaned back against her pillow and crossed her arms over her chest. “I have a feeling I’m about to find out.”
--
(explaining quantum physics without explaining the maths behind it made Ellie feel like an internet charlatan, but Aster was adamant in not learning the numbers)
--
Sometimes they’d call each other to watch movies, sometimes just to chat, sometimes to play Minecraft or discuss a particularly bad book. Lately, though, things had changed in a way Ellie couldn’t quite pinpoint. Lately, Aster seemed to be calling her just because.
And Ellie appreciated it, this weird shape of hanging out they seemed to develop. Which meant she was in trouble. It was consuming her, this thing with Aster, like embers which she knew would turn into a fire, but whose warmth she couldn’t quite give up.
She flipped through the pages of her book. For the last hour or so, they had been sharing a comfortable silence while Aster painted something-or-other and Ellie studied. Every now and then, Aster would interrupt her to ask about a color or a brush stroke.
Ellie finished the last paragraph and blew stray strands of hair from her face, before crossing her arms and giving the screen a long look. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Mmh?” Aster half turned. There was paint on her cheek, and Ellie felt her lips curl into a smile. “Sure. What’s up?”
“Why landscapes?” She eyed the painting with interest – the palette was mostly orange, autumn leaves and a lake under the sunset. It was beautiful, warm colors seeping into the water, leaves sending ripples through the reflected trees. “I love the colors,” she added, “I love how you’re not afraid of making them vibrant.”
They’re lively in such an unashamed way, she mused without voicing the thoughts. Like you are, when you feel safe to be yourself.
Aster smiled. “There’s a notable lack of people in my work, isn’t there? I don’t know. I just feel…” she paused. Ellie gave her time to think, carefully tracing the brush strokes with her eyes. Aster shrugged. “People overwhelm me. I want my art to bring me peace.”
“Huh.” It wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting. “I always took you for an extrovert. You know, what with how much you were always surrounded by people, going to parties.”
Aster’s face was indecipherable then – though Ellie wasn’t particularly good at reading expressions. “I actually much rather stick around small groups of friends. High school me was… not the best version of me.”
“Oh, thank god,” Ellie grinned. “Because if you told me you’d peaked in high school, that would be just sad.”
Aster tilted her head, then laughed. “You’re an awful, awful person, Ellie Chu. You’re riding a roller coaster straight to hell.”
“I’m an atheist lesbian,” She shot back. “I’m already going to hell anyway, might as well reserve my seat on Satan’s lap.”
This time, Ellie joined her in laughter. Aster was still very much defensive regarding religion and all the deep wounds undoubtedly delivered by being a preacher’s daughter, but Ellie tried not to be invasive and little by little they grew more comfortable with the topic. Ellie had noticed Aster was much more open about her feelings when painting, and so she decided to take a chance.
“Have you told your dad yet?”
She didn’t need to specify. Aster knew what she meant. “No way. You?”
“Nope,” She leaned back against her chair and stared at the ceiling. “Not that I think dad wouldn’t take it well –” she hesitated. “I mean, maybe he wouldn’t. I don’t know. Dad is really hard to understand when it comes down to feelings.” She paused. “I think we’re alike.”
Aster acquiesced. “At least I get to know for a fact that dad would lose his shit. His daughter? Queer? Has to be the devil.”
“You’re bisexual, though, aren’t you?” Ellie looked back to the screen. The conversation was going into dangerous territory, and she hesitated. “Fifty per cent odds you’ll end up with a guy and the matter of your sexuality will never come up at all?”
“Mmh.” Aster put down her brush, sinking it into a cup of muddy water that grew darker when the paint dissolved into it. “In theory. But no, that doesn’t sound quite right. It has to do with identity. I’m not straight even if I’m dating a man, and…if dad doesn’t know that, then he doesn’t love me for who I am. He loves a concept of me, a person that does not exist. And that kind of love, well. I think I rather be hated by what I am than loved for what I am not.”
She considered Aster’s words, absently rolling her pen under her fingertips. If she stopped to think about it, she truly did understand the sentiment. But Aster put great value in authenticity, whether Ellie was more concerned with facts and consequences. “That sounds objectively unwise.”
“What do you mean?”
Ellie shrugged. “Fake love still pays your bills?”
Aster gave her a long, hard stare, then laughed. “Must you be like this? Always so… disgustingly pragmatic. Can you not, for once, forget about the practical implications and just engage in my deep philosophy?”
She felt a grin tug at her lips. “I can, but someone has to remind you to be sensible. Maybe wait until you have a job to come out, if ever?”
“Yes, obviously,” Aster rolled her eyes. “Do you think so lowly of me as to think I do not have a plan?”
“Do you have a plan?”
The question was met with unexpected silence. Ellie turned to the computer screen, tilting her head, only to see Aster chewing on her bottom lip, her eyes unfocused like they got when she was deep in thought. “The problem is that I do, and that makes your convenient idea useless. Because that plan doesn’t end with me and some random guy, Ellie.”
She felt her brain freeze on the edge of extraordinary implications. Ellie wanted to arrive at a very specific, desirable conclusion from those words, but she didn’t dare assume. How does it end, she wanted to ask, but the words got stuck in her throat as she felt her heart skip a beat. “I hope there’s a place for me in your plan,” she managed.
Aster scoffed, shook her head and gave her back to the camera, grabbing her paintbrush on the way. “You’re unbelievable.” She took the brush to the canvas, making short, rough strokes. Ellie could almost see Aster’s irritation in them.
Damn but I’m good at shoving my entire foot into my mouth. Ellie made an indistinguishable sound of distress. Maybe Aster did want her. But the risk was too great to get invested, because feelings were fickle little bastards and things were too uncertain. Aster was definitely annoyed, though, and she knew she had to say something.
Ellie took a deep breath. “Hey, I made the first move,” she felt a burn spread from her cheeks all the way to her ear tips. “It’s only fair that you be the one to make… all the next moves.”
“Fine,” Aster replied without turning around, her hand stopping mid-stroke. “Summer vacations are coming. I’ll go back home, see my dad. I bet so will you. We will, for once, be at the same place. Go out with me then.”
She hadn’t worded it as a question, but rather as a demand. Not that Ellie felt like objecting – though the idea did make her uncomfortably breathless. “Okay,” she said, her voice almost a squeak. She cleared her throat. “Where will you take me?”
“That’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises,” she whined. “I like plans. Thoroughly planned out plans. Preferably made by me. Plans which I planned.”
“That’s too bad.” Aster replied, and resumed painting.
Ellie was happy to watch her in silence, while she let a million thoughts race in her own head.
--
(they called each other at obscene times in the middle of the night, just to hear one another’s voices. Aster’s soft, sleepy tone, her mere cadence, was enough to make Ellie feel warm and clumsy. She was falling for this girl, hard, fast, hopelessly.
and try as she might, she just could not plan for it.)
--
There was something oppressive about being back home, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Ellie liked to tell herself that her years at high school hardly mattered, because for the most, they were shit. Sure, there were good things about it – conspiracies with a teacher who believed in her, days teaching her one and only friend how to actually hold a conversation, evenings with her father watching old movies.
There were good things, and she tried to cling to them, and most of the time that worked, and she was able to remember things fondly. But actually being in Squahamish felt like a spartan-kick directly to her metaphorical balls. There were crippling, basal levels of constant anxiety which she could not shake off, so deeply rooted inside her that if she hadn’t left the town, she wouldn’t know life without it.
She was jumpy. She was nervous. It was trauma, flat out, undeniable. She kept expecting someone to spawn from behind a tree and call her a slur, to which she’d react by being angrily relieved, because a slur was not physical violence, at least. She was not ashamed of who she was, not ashamed of the otherness she showed through the shape of her eyes and the color of her skin, not ashamed of the otherness she carried in her heart.
The problem was that she had a convoluted relationship with fear. The problem was, it was vital that she proved to herself that she was not afraid, even when she was. Ellie knew all that, rationally. But she also had a tendency to let her own feelings slip by unnoticed, until they sucker punched her with risky, irresistible impulses.
And yet Ellie was also a firm believer in the hedonistic principle of avoiding suffering, so hide herself she did, worried that one extra little thing would be the final offense that would push the so-called good citizen from yelling insults in a ‘joking’ tone to actually harming her. It was so very tiring, existing in that constant state of alarm, in that constant inner conflict between making herself invisible because it was easier or speaking up because it was the right thing and she was not scared –
“You look like someone about to go to a funeral,” Aster spoke from behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Ellie squealed, nearly jumping off her skin, slamming her knees against the top of the table, heart hammering against her ribcage. She let out enough curses to make a sailor blush before stumbling to her feet. “This place makes me uneasy –”
She turned around, and was struck by the presence of Aster. It was different, seeing her up close. Aster was… Ellie wouldn’t quite call her imposing – off-putting was a more apt description. College had changed her, as it does to everyone, and she looked more confidently weird than ever. That subdued aura she’d had while in High School was gone, swapped for something else; it hadn’t even been two years but Ellie could tell that Aster was that much closer to the person she was meant to be.
Which made things harder. Because the girl she’d had a crush on was gone, grown into someone else, and that new person, well. She pulled into the strings of Ellie’s heart with the ease that Ellie pulled on the strings of her guitar. And Ellie was afraid – afraid that not unlike Aster, her crush would grow and change into something else.
(the realization she was scared meant she was in even bigger trouble. she knew her daredevil brain would force her to act on it.)
“You’re staring,” Aster arched her eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”
Her clothes were mismatched in a way Ellie could tell was purposeful. There were droplets of paint splattered on her cheeks. And she was smiling, radiant in a way Ellie had never personally witnessed. Aster was doing well – Aster was glowing.
“As a matter of fact, you do,” Ellie turned around on impulse, grabbed a napkin and took it to Aster’s cheek. And then her brain realized what she was doing, in front of all these people no less, and she froze right in the middle of wiping the paint off, leaving the smudge worse than it was when she started. It did not detract from Aster’s magnetic attractiveness at all, and Ellie caught herself thinking, is it really so bad to want this for myself?
Mercifully, no one but Aster seemed to notice the gesture. “God damn it,” she muttered, and she was actually blushing, which made Ellie blush in response. “I don’t want it to seem like – I just – I did prepare for this. Took a shower and everything, I swear. But then it was a bit too early and the painting was almost done and I just figured –”
Ellie wanted to kiss her, wanted to hold her face and press their lips together and relish on the surprised little gasp Aster would make. She wanted it so bad it ached, and she kept imagining herself doing it right then, in the middle of the restaurant, in front of all these people, spitting on the face of her fear of repression and of her fear of – of –
(it was so great, so scary, she couldn’t even name it. that made her angry.)
“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered, one final scream from her sense of self-preservation.
Aster closed her mouth, opened it, then closed it again. “But I – the coffee! We were meant to have coffee first. I planned this day! Carefully! Step by step!”
“And I appreciate your commitment,” Ellie leaned in so she could speak the words on Aster’s ear. Her skin radiated warmth, and Ellie wanted to feel it under her fingers. She was so drawn to this woman. And she was so very screwed. “I just desperately want some time alone with you.”
(she could barely believe herself when she said those words)
“I – what the hell happened to the shy girl that could barely look me in the eyes?” Aster pulled back to look at her, then shook her head and smirked. “So bold all of a sudden. So I suppose if part of my plans involved taking you swimming, you would no longer be a Russian doll?”
Motherfucker, Ellie thought, and felt her unexpected courage slip from between her fingers, only to return tenfold in the shape of pure spite. She’d never hear the end of it if she backed down, either. And Aster wasn’t the only one growing. Ellie was more stubborn than she was awkward, and with her growing confidence, she just might have grown brave enough to go skinny dipping in the woods with a cute girl.
Maybe.
“I’ll be in my skimpiest bikinis,” Ellie promised, knowing she did not own bikinis at all.
“Do you even have bikinis?”
The ease with which Aster figured her out was infuriating.
It made Ellie smile.
Astor arched her eyebrows and licked her lips. Ellie felt her ears burn, her palms uncomfortably sweaty, her heart beating fast enough that she was glad she had no family history of infarction. If she couldn’t solve her goddamn inner conflict, she was going to implode.
“I could have. If I wanted to.” God, please, no bikinis, “We can buy some, if you want to see me wear them so bad.”
Aster laughed, and it sent Ellie’s heart into a flutter, the urge to kiss her growing stronger still. “That won’t be necessary. What I want is for you to be comfortable. But it’s nice to see you’ve grown so confident. Almost cocky, mmh?”
“Well and you’ve grown –” the snappy response died at her throat before she could even finish it, because she was lost in the shape of Aster’s long lashes, the pink of her lips, and it was so hard to focus, “ – you’ve grown –” She shook her head. “Can we please get out of here? The tight walls are giving me claustrophobia.”
“Sure they are,” Aster replied, but nodded, and Ellie payed for her snack and followed her out of the coffee shop.
I just want some good things, she thought as they turned the corner, and Aster was chatting enthusiastically about whether Parnassian poetry had artistic merit when it valued form over feeling. Ellie was only paying half attention. She wanted to kiss Aster. She wanted to take what was being offered, she wanted to make dangerous assumptions, she wanted to call Aster at odd hours to talk about whether nihilism was just existentialism for edgy people, she wanted –
I want to fall in love, she realized, and the magnitude of it made her break eye contact and look at her own shoes. And deep-down Ellie knew that was a stupid thing to want, because deep down she knew she already had. Rationally she knew she already had. But she wasn’t ready to face that, not yet. Because a love like that was scary. She was scared. She was –
Oh, fuck this.
Her hands found Aster’s hips and she pushed Aster against a brick wall without even checking to see if they were being watched, and Ellie knew she would have to talk to her therapist about this kneejerk reaction, but she accepted those consequences as she pressed her body against Aster’s, pulse quickening. She wanted this. There would be hell to pay later, when her moral hangover hit and she realized she just set herself up to exploring a lot of terrifying unknown territory.
But it felt worth it. Aster definitely deserved it. And Ellie felt as if she deserved it, too. Aster laughed and touched Ellie’s cheeks, traced her jaw, leaned in –
“Teal,” Ellie stopped, her lips hovering just above Aster’s, staring at the colorful splotches on her cheeks. She rubbed her thumb on the paint. “This is it, isn’t it? That’s the color on your face.”
“Finally! I told you –”
“It’s just a shade of green,” Ellie replied. “That’s what it is, it’s literally just a shade of green –”
“It’s not fucking –”
Ellie didn’t let her finish. She kissed Aster into silence, and it felt just as good as the first time – no, better still – because Aster kissed her back, as if she finally knew what she wanted and who she was.
Aster pulled back and scowled at her. “It’s teal –”
And Ellie kissed her again.